Institutional affiliations
Institutions with which Professor Hans Werner Gottinger has claimed an affiliation A search on the Web and on his published papers reveals Professor Gottinger appearing at (or claiming to be at) the following institutions over the period from the late 1980s onwards 1: #In ~1985, Gottinger applied for a post at Maastricht University in the new Department of Economics and Business Administration, but he was unsuccessful. (As far as those in the department can recall, he was not even short-listed.) Notwithstanding this, from the mid-1980s onwards (for example, in his 1985 paper in Theory and ''Decision) and subsequently at least up to 2005 (e.g. in an article that year in ''World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development), Gottinger gives the following address in a large number of papers and books: Institute of Management Science, University of Maastricht, PO Box 591, NL 6200, Maastricht.1 {A search for “PO Box 591” produces no hits on the Maastricht University Website. (The correct PO Box for the University appears to be 616 – see http://www.unimaas.nl/default.asp?template=werkveld.htm&id=LR7XPU04153O2BKUD5B5&taal=en .) And the only hits on Google for “PO Box 591” + “Maastricht” are for Gottinger’s own papers & websites. So this is almost certainly a private PO Box that he set up. That way, if anyone wrote to the Institute of Management Science at this address, for example, to obtain a reference for Gottinger, he would be the only person to receive it, and could therefore respond accordingly. This is probably how this bogus affiliation remained undetected for so many years. #In his 2005 bio (http://www.worldsustainable.org/conferences/conf3_keynote.html ), he is listed as “'Director' of the Institute of Management Science, University of Maastricht. No such Institute exists,2 and enquiries at Maastricht University reveal that there has never been such an Institute at Maastricht University,3 and that Gottinger has never been a Professor at the University.4 This was one of the addresses given in his 1996 Kyklos paper; in 1999 the Editors of Kyklos concluded that this paper had been plagiarised – see http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1999.tb00219.x?journalCode=kykl . It was also the address given on his 2002 publication in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues, an article that the Editor now believes to be plagiarised. {Following the Research Policy investigations, the President of the Maastricht University Executive Board wrote formally to Hans-Werner Gottinger, requesting him to withdraw within two weeks all his claimed affiliations with the University, otherwise legal action would follow. In his letter replying to the University President, Gottinger agreed to do this and offered the following explanation for the ‘mix-up’ concerning his supposed affiliation with Maastricht University: “For explanation, I was associated for several years with EIPA, Maastricht and MSM, and this was inadvertently extended in the context of a few publications.” Subsequent investigations by Hans Goossen (of the Dagblad De Limburger) revealed that neither of these organisations have any record of Gottinger having been employed as a member of staff by them. However, enquiries with colleagues at EIPA (the European Institute of Public Administration) suggest he held a brief consultancy contract there in the mid-1980s, before being fired – for plagiarism.} #From 1988-1990, Gottinger claims (on his 2005 CV – see http://www.worldsustainable.org/conferences/conf3_keynote.html ) to have been “Director (non-executive), Institute for Technological Forecasting and Assessment, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Bonn”. This address is consistent with the one he gives in papers for the period 1988-1992: FRAUNHOFER INST NAT WISSENSCH TECH TRENDANALYSE, APPELSGARTEN 2, D-5350 EUSKIRCHEN. {Contacts in FhG recall that, even at the time he applied for this post in ~1987, there was some suspicion of plagiarism, but in the end the job of Director was offered to him ‘in good faith’. The Fraunhofer publications database list 8 of his publications for 1986-88. According to investigations at FhG by Nora Lessing (FAZ), Gottinger was subsequently sacked from this post when it was discovered that his 1983 book, Coping with Complexity, had plagiarised parts of a U.S. Office of Naval Research report, A Mathematical Theory of Organization, published in 1974.} #From 1990 to 1992, Gottinger worked at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (which is separate from the University of Oxford). Ten of his papers from this period appear on their website (EV2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 15, and GW9) – see http://www.oxfordenergy.org/books.php?&myflag=f&submit=Filter&searchfor=Environment . It was also the address on some of his published papers during this time, for example a 1992 paper in Energy Economics. #Over the same period of 1990-1992, Gottinger was also based in Nuffield College, Oxford. It was during this time that he submitted his paper to Research Policy, giving this address. This paper has now been shown to have plagiarised Bass’s 1980 paper in the'' Journal of Business''. Gottinger also published a 1993 paper in Waste Management and Research, which gives the Nuffield College address. In his CV he claims that he was a “Professor of Economics, University of Oxford, and Senior Fellow, Nuffield College” during this period. However, our inquiries can find no evidence for the first part of this claim while the second, according to college authorities, is an exaggeration – he was actually a ‘Non Stipendiary Research Fellow’ at Nuffield College. {According Gillian Coates <gillian.coates@economics.oxford.ac.uk> , there is no record that he was ever a Professor of Economics (or a ‘Visiting Professor’). The information regarding Nuffield College comes from the Warden’s Secretary.} #In 1993-94, he worked at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo (CICERO), at the University of Oslo. This was evidently quite a productive period in that he deposited 10 working papers on their website in just over one year – see http://www.cicero.uio.no/about/index_e.asp or http://www.cicero.uio.no/Publications/searchpub.asp?person_id=41&lang=en#bm_result .5 CICERO is the address given for example in a 1996 paper in the Elsevier journal, European Journal of Operational Research, although he is not listed in the CICERO Annual Report for 1996 (http://www.cicero.uio.no/publications/annualreports/a1996.pdf ), so he had moved on by then. #In 1995, Professor Gottinger was one of the candidates for the Rector of the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. At this stage, he was listed as a Professor at the University of Maastricht. In the election, he lost narrowly (by 5 votes) to Professor Dörfler. See www.uni-klu.ac.at/home/mitteiblatt/old/94-95/mittei31 . {Did no-one at Klagenfurt University check on Gottinger’s claimed institutional affiliations at the time? If they had, then surely he would not have been allowed to stand as a candidate??} He applied for the Rectorship of Klagenfurt again in 1999. However, by then the Kyklos retraction of Gottinger’s paper had just become known, as had the case of plagiarism detected by Josef Hofbauer, so the selection committee decided not to pursue his application. {This is based on the recollection of members of Klagenfurt University, who brought the two plagiarism cases to the attention of the selection committee.} #From 1996 up to around 2004, Gottinger gives the following address on a number of his publications: International Institute for Environmental Economics and Management (IIEEM), Schloss Waldsee, 88339 Bad Waldsee, Germany (e.g. http://www.springerlink.com/content/g2hr0390210r3622/ and http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ind/ijep/2004/00000015/00000003/art00013 ). This institute is also given by Gottinger on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and on conference websites – e.g. http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/gdufour/2004WorkGottinger.htm . On the Web, however, there is no record of such an Institute, apart from when Gottinger quotes it as his address. And, according to the Web, no-one else seems to have worked at such an institute. Schloß Waldsee was, however, at one stage the address of a private institution,6 Gesellschaft für Internationale Studien mbH or the International School of General Management (ISGM) (see the archived webpages for www.isgm-badwaldsee.de/ in http://web.archive.org/ ; also those for www.business-school.de/ ), which offered Bachelors of Business Administration degrees (see http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/77753/ ). On at least one occasion – a 1998 paper in the Elsevier journal, Journal of Policy Modeling – the address given by HWG suggests that IIEEM was part of this International School, or vice versa. And on at least one website (see http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/veroeff/fb/93-95/156.htm ) HWG described himself as the ‘Academic Director’ of ISGM. IIEEM was the second of the addresses given by Gottinger in the plagiarised Kyklos paper (see above). {According to a former student, Gottinger was indeed lecturing at this international school during the mid/late 1990s, so this was presumably one of his sources of finance during this period. And the former Administration Head of ISGM has since confirmed that Gottinger was at this school until 1999. According to her, HWG left when there was a change in ownership of the school in 1999. She has no recollection of IIEEM (nor of IITME – see below). During his time at ISGM, HWG may well have used the international school as a convenient ‘post-box’ for mail sent to him or to the so-called ‘International Institute’. Note that the title that Gottinger has given for his institute seems to be an amalgam of two other institutes, the Institute for Environmental Economics and Management (IOEW) in Austria, and the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at the University of Lund in Sweden (IIIEE).} #In his plagiarised 1996 Kyklos paper, the third of the addresses given by Gottinger was the School of Economics, University of Nagasaki, Nagasaki 850. And in 1998, three of his working papers appear on the website of the University of Nagasaki, in which he is listed as “Professor, Faculty of Economics” – see www.econ.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/info/ra/dp_list.html or http://www.icf.or.jp/report/open/down9/gottinger.pdf {Apparently he was on the payroll. Did they check on his claimed institutional affiliations before making him a Professor?} #In 1998, Gottinger was one of eight candidates for the Rectorship of Salzburg University (see pdf file from press article database – supplied by Ulrich Berger). In this, he is described as “Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hans Gottinger (Managerial and Environmental Economics, University of Maastricht, Niederlande)”. On this occasion (unlike for the University of Klagenfurt in 1995), he was not short-listed. #In 1998-2000, two of Gottinger’s working papers were deposited on the website of FEEM (Fondazione Eno Enrico Mattei). One of these – http://www.feem.it/Feem/Pub/Publications/WPapers/WP2000-018.htm – was subsequently published in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues. At first sight, this appeared to have plagiarised Chen (1997), but it is now clear that the source was almost certainly Chapter 4 in Chen’s 1991 PhD thesis (which Chen subsequently converted into his 1997 article). {Source: Professor Zhiqi Chen, Carleton University} If Chen had not published this later article, then the plagiarism in Gottinger (2002) would probably not have been detected. #In 1999, under a new president, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was keen to build up its Department of Economics, in particular in the area of ecological economics. It sought to appoint as Chair of the Department an economist of international stature. After giving an impressive interview and lecture, Gottinger was appointed to the post (he is listed in their telephone directory for that year – see http://www.rpi.edu/dept/catalog/99-00/Faculty/g.html ). This was when he acquired the RPI email address that he has sometimes since used (e.g. in 2004 on http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/gdufour/2004WorkGottinger.htm and in 2006 on http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/GlobalConst/participantslisting.htm ). However, he resigned very shortly afterwards when the existence of the plagiarised paper in Kyklos became known within RPI. #In early 2000, Gottinger applied for the post of Head of the Technology Policy Group at the Austrian Research Centres (ARCS). He made it to the short list and an interview was set up. In the mean time, one of the staff at ARCS decided to check for him on the Web and to look at some of his publications. This person was puzzled that he had changed positions so often in his career, and that it was not possible to find information on some of the affiliations mentioned on his publications. On many publications, Gottinger mentioned that he was on absence of leave from the Institute of Management Science at Maastricht University; but it turned out that there was no such institute at Maastricht University (the ARCS person called Maastricht University and checked on this). At that time (summer 2000), there was already information available on the Internet on at least one case of plagiarism (concerning a publication in Kyklos, the Swiss economics journal, which was basically a copy of an article by a British economist). All this information about Gottinger was given to the person in charge of the selection process at ARCS. As a result, ARCS cancelled the previously arranged job interview with Gottinger. #From September to December 2000, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Salerno funded by the Carisal Foundation – see http://www.unisa.it/download/Relazione%20scientifica%202000.pdf and http://www.unisa.it/download/Relazione%20scientifica%202001.pdf , http://www.acri.it/3_fond/3_fond_files/Bilanci_2001/2594_B_01.pdf {Did anyone at Salerno have suspicions at the time? If he got a Fellowship funded by the Carisal Foundation, what checks did they do before making the award?} #From October 2000 to July 2001, he was also ‘Carisal Fellow’ at the Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF) in Italy (a centre linked to Salerno, Naples and Bocconi Universities) – see http://www.csef.it/reports/2001.pdf and http://www.csef.it/visiting.htm#Gottinger ). During this time, he claimed to be on leave of absence from his position as “Professor of Managerial Economics” at the University of Maastricht. He deposited five of his papers on the CSEF electronic working paper site – see http://www.csef.it/wpcsef.htm . {Did anyone at CSEF have suspicions?} #From 2000-2002, his 2005 CV claims that he was a Visiting Professor at the Amsterdam Institute of Finance, Amsterdam. A search of their website shows no mention of Gottinger. {If he was a ‘Visiting Professor’, did they check his claimed institutional affiliations?} #On a number of occasions around 2000-04, he listed his address as IIRRM, Schloss Waldsee, Bad Waldsee (see e.g. the cached webpage http://web.archive.org/web/20030124174516/http://www.inderscience.com/ ). This is presumably yet another International Institute, but it is not clear what the ‘RRM’ stands for (perhaps something to do with ‘Resource Management’). On other occasions (e.g. http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=5271&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or ), Gottinger has implied that IIRRM might be the abbreviation for the International Institute for Environmental Economics and Management. However, “RRM” does not appear to be German for ‘Environmental economics and management’. (IIRRM is actually the acronym for the International Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine, an organization of health professionals dedicated to clinical research in restorative reproductive medicine – see www.iirrm.org . However, it is not located in Schloss Waldsee, Bad Waldsee but has its headquarters in London.) #In 2001, at the IAMOT Conference, Gottinger organised two sessions and presented two papers. Here, he was listed as working at the International Institute for Information Technology, Maastricht (see http://www.iamot.org/IAMOT2001/PDF/Papersess.pdf ). A search on Google reveals that there is an International Institute for Information Technology; indeed, there are at least four of them but they are located in Virginia Tech in the US, in India, in Ghana and in Kenya. There appears to be no such International Institute in Maastricht. #On publications and websites from 2002 to the present, he has listed as his address the International Institute for Technology Management and Economics (IITME), Unterring 21, 85051 Ingolstadt (see http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijrm). In his CV, he claims that he was Director of IITME from 1995-1999. {He seems to have got his dates mixed up here – this was the time he was supposedly at the (fictional) International Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, IIEEM (when he was actually employed by the International School of General Management, ISGM – see above). It would seem that on certain occasions he retrospectively gave IITME the same address as IIEEM, i.e. Schloss Waldsee, the home of ISGM.} Again, though, there appears to be no such International Institute, and no-one else seems to have worked at such an institute. Moreover, the postal address is the same as that listed in the German telephone directory ( www.teleauskunft.de ) as the private address of Professor Dr. Hans-Werner Gottinger and his wife, Gertraud . {Presumably there is no ‘institute’ at this address, only a private house?7} However, later checking revealed one further subtle difference. In Gottinger’s CV, he gives the title of this institute as the International Institute of Technology Management and Economics (IITME). When we search on this, we find that one other person did use this address on a single occasion – Dr Gerhard Mensch (see http://www.agon-net.de/images/stories/pdf/en/expertise%20ephi%20en.pdf ). #Around 2002, in a series of no less than 10 papers (or ‘chapters’) published in the Inderscience journal, International Journal of Environment and Pollution, he gave as his address: Department of Meteorology, Istanbul Technical University. That university has no such department listed on its website, and no mention of Gottinger. (There is a Department of Meteorological Engineering in the Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but this, too, contains no mention of Gottinger.) {According to the Rector of the University, HWG was never employed there.} #Around 2002-2005, he next appears as Professor in the School of Policy Studies and/or the Institute of Management Science at Kwansei Gakuin University (also the address given in his 2006 Routledge book and in a 2006 article in the Elsevier journal, Japan and the World Economy). Again, he deposited some of his papers on their electronic working papers series (http://www.ksc.kwansei.ac.jp/08_english/08b_academic_active/08b_working_paper.html). {No longer works. Instead go to http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/english/index.jsp and then search on “Gottinger”.} Although he seems to have had a post there in 2004-05 (see http://www.kwansei.ac.jp/ContentsEn?cnid=4251&mode=1&ax1=0&cdid=null&page=2), he is not apparently listed among their faculty at present. {Checks by Nature confirm that he was employed by this University over this period.} #In 2003, he worked on an external research contract for ICSEAD, the International Centre for the Study of East Asian Development in Japan (see http://www.icsead.or.jp/3research/exresearch_e.html ). #In his 2005 paper in World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, he gives his address as the Institute of Economic Analysis, University of Osaka (KGU), Osaka (along with his Maastricht IMS address). In his 2005 bio, he is listed as “Professor of Economics at the University of Osaka (KGU)”. And in his most recent paper listed in Google Scholar, which is International Journal of Revenue Management, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2007), pp.200-216, he again gives this Osaka address. However, he does not appear to be listed on the Osaka University website. Indeed, they do not have an “Institute of Economic Analysis”, only an “Institute of Social and Economic Research” and Gottinger is not apparently listed there either. {Following investigations by Nature in Japan, it has become clear that Gottinger did not have any affiliation with the University of Osaka. In one of his later emails (to Stefan Schmitt of Spiegel), he admits he was never at the University of Osaka, and claims that this was “sloppily misrepresented” (see also A. Abbott’s article in Nature). The confusion seems to relate to the “KGU” acronym in the above address. This is often the abbreviation used for Kwansei Gakuin University (see previous item above), although that is in Kobe, not Osaka. However, “KGU” may also refer to Kansai Gaidai University, a rather less prestigious institution located in Hirakata in the Osaka Prefecture. This may tie in with what Gottinger said in his email (to Stefan Schmitt of Spiegel) about the University of Osaka address being “false but geographically correct”.} #He later appeared on the website of the Institute of Innovation Research (IIR) at Hitotsubashi University, where his 4 electronic working papers (apparently added in 2007 – see e.g. http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/file/WP07-02Gottinger.pdf ) list IIR as one of his addresses (the other being IMS, University of Maastricht). He is not listed among their current staff so he has apparently now moved on, but for a IIR conference in December 2006 he was listed on the agenda as a ‘Visiting Professor’ at IIR – see http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/event/UpstreamInventionsConferenceEnglish.pdf ). He was also one of the speakers at an IIR workshop in March 2007 – see http://www.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/iir-w3/annual/arj2006.pdf . {He appears to have held some sort of temporary visiting post here. According to the IIR Director, after ~ 6 months, he left IIR at the end of March 2007 to return to Germany. In an email shortly after, he mentioned that he was ill. In other emails, he has referred to a “chronic illness” and to having cancer.} #In a 2007-08 website describing a forthcoming international conference organised by EUROSIS (see http://www.eurosis.org/cms/index.php?q=node/354 ), HWG was advertised as the invited lecturer for a 11-session lecture series on ‘Industrial Economics and Management’. He was listed as “Professor of Managerial and Industrial Economics, Institute Director, STRATEC, TU Munich, Germany”. When HWG’s previous history was drawn to the attention of the conference organisers, they sought ‘clarification’ from HWG regarding his institutional affiliation. He promptly withdrew from the conference. {Enquiries at TU Munich (initiated via Prof. Dr. Joachim Henkel and Florian Jell) indicate that HWG is not a member of the TUM faculty, nor does TUM have an institute called ‘STRATEC’. (There are two German companies called STRATEC, one of which produces biomedical systems and the other abrasives and fibre technology, but neither has any obvious direct links to TUM.) On this same website, HWG includes among his ‘Course Readings’ the following: “Europe Economics, Final Report and Annex for EU, DG Enterprise (Glynn, Gottinger, Stoneman, eds.), London 2003”. According to Dermot Glynn, the Chairman of Europe Economics, Gottinger was certainly not an Editor of this report, nor even a co-author. He was mentioned as a potential contributor in the early stages of the EU project, but subsequently played no significant role (in particular, there is no record that he received payment for any contribution to the project). He certainly was not the ‘Editor’ of the final report. Glynn met Gottinger when he was at Nuffield College. He recalls hearing a few years ago certain doubts being expressed about HWG’s research integrity.} A paper published in 2011 lists as his affiliation "STRATEC, Munich, Germany. Email: info@stratec-con.com" ---- 1 He also gave it as his previous institutional affiliation when he applied for the job at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in 1990 (see below), according to the Director of the Institute at the time. 2 Hans-Werner Gottinger currently lists his details on the ZoomInfo website – see http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=858455387. There, besides still claiming to be a Professor at the University of Maastricht, he also describes himself as “Director, Institute of Management Sciences”. Here, at last we can find a website for this elusive institute, an off-shore one – www.ims.com.jm – in other words, it has apparently migrated from the University of Maastricht to Jamaica, acquiring an ‘s’ on the end of its title along the way! (This last website seems to have now been deleted. However, a record of it can still be seen as http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/CompanyDetail.aspx?CompanyID=43010011&cs=QBCkEfbfo# .) 3 Interestingly, there was an Institute of Management Science at the Technical University Delft from 1952 to 1989, when it moved to the city of Maastricht. In 1993, this institution changed its name to the Maastricht School of Management – see http://www.fhrinstitute.com/adm_mba_4_1.htm . (The Maastricht School of Management is not to be confused with the Universiteit Maastricht Business School, which is part of the University of Maastricht.) However, Gottinger is not listed among the faculty of the Maastricht School of Management – see http://www.msm.nl/ and a search for him on their website produced no evidence that he had ever worked there either, a fact subsequently confirmed by Hans Goossen of Dagblad De Limburger. 4 In his CV, he claims to have been a Professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Maastricht from 1983 to the present. 5 In the light of the current investigations, CICERO are now planning to remove these papers from their website. 6 In 2002, the Gesellschaft für Internationale Studien mbH was transformed into the Zeppelin University (http://www.zeppelin-university.de/index_eng.php ) based in Friedrichshafen. Now, the Schloss Waldsee address seems to be that of a nursing home – see http://www.st-elisabeth-stiftung.de/1.0.html . 7 Unterringstr. 21, D-85051 Ingolstadt, his wife works as Studiendirektorin at Katharinen-Gymnasium Ingolstadt. ---- 1 More fragmentary information on earlier institutional affiliations is given in the next section.